


Sleep Like A Baby

by KaytiKazoo



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dad Derek Hale, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Married Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, POV Derek Hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 16:04:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5055055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaytiKazoo/pseuds/KaytiKazoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whoever came up with the phrase "sleep like a baby" has clearly never had one.<br/>-OR-<br/>The one where it's Derek's turn to get up with their daughter and it doesn't go as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleep Like A Baby

It was Derek’s turn to get up with her, since Stiles had been on baby duty half of the week and all of the weekend while Derek was putting the finishing touches on his chapter for his dissertation. Stiles deserved a night to sleep soundly, so Derek got up reluctantly as Emmeline began to cry and whimper in her nursery. He glanced back at his husband, snoring lightly as he hugged his pillow tightly to his body, and dragged himself out of their warm bedroom and down the cold ass hallway to their daughter’s nursery. She was standing, holding onto the bar of the crib and crying loudly, almost pointedly. Derek sighed and crossed the room to her.

“Hey Emmy,” he cooed, pushing her thick hair out of her face. Tiny tears were rolling down her pudgy, flushed cheeks. Her dark blue eyes looked up at him and she continued to emit wails. “What’s the matter?”

He lifted her up into his arms and checked her diaper.

“Well, that’s dry, and you can’t possibly be hungry since you ate an hour ago. Are you just being obstinate tonight? You know it’s Poppa’s turn, huh? You sleep through the night most of the time unless it’s me getting up for you.”

She kept crying, her head tilted back to maximize the dramatic effect of her plight.

“You just gotta go back to sleep, though. It’ll fix everything.”

She didn’t seem to agree.

He lay her down in the crib just for her to get back up. He tried again, and again, and again to get his daughter to just lay down and try to fall back asleep. She kept crying, though, and kept getting back up onto her little footie-pajama-covered feet. She would not be deterred.

Derek did the only thing he could think of; he climbed carefully into the crib with the toddler and lay down. It was surprisingly spacious given the fact that it was for very small humans.

Emmeline looked at him, and then let him shift her onto his chest. Her cries fell away easily and she was laying peacefully, already drifting off to sleep. Derek sighed happily.

Then the realization hit him.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

He would not be able to move to get out of the crib without waking Emmeline. He rubbed slow, concentric circles into her back, trying to guide her into a deep enough sleep that he could shift her and get out.

He waited, lulling her deeper and deeper into sleep before starting to move. She raised her head with a sleepy coo and he froze. He rested his head back against the cushioned lining of the crib and waited some more.

If Stiles had noticed his absence yet, he hadn’t come to investigate. Then again Stiles slept like the dead, unlike their daughter.

Derek shifted, watching Emmeline shift too, raising a small balled up fist to her mouth. He brushed her dark hair out of her face and admired how peaceful she was when she was asleep. Ever since she’d learned to walk, she was into everything, and nothing was safe. He wondered how his mother had handled having five of them when he and Stiles could barely handle one.

Derek looked up and around him, trying to figure some way out of this.

He whispered her name, testing to see if she would wake. She remained peacefully dozed on his chest. He whispered her name again a little louder with the same results.

He tried wiggling himself slowly from underneath her, but as spacious as the crib was, there wasn’t enough room to easily slide himself over. Just as he thought he was making decent progress, Emmeline sat up.

He braced himself for a tired toddler tirade, but she just shifted and threw herself over his chest again, spreading her arms out to take up more space. He sighed and stayed still, allowing Emmeline to fall back asleep.

Time passed, although without a clock in the room, he wasn’t sure how much. He was so tired, though, staring up at the constellations of glow-in-the-dark stars that Stiles had insisted for Emmeline’s ceiling. The rest of the room was Lydia Martin designed from the crib placement to the colors of the walls to which theme they went with. But Stiles had insisted that his daughter could look up and see the stars.

Lydia had tried to argue that Emmeline wouldn’t know what they were until she was older but Stiles had insisted.

Derek had tried to stay out of that argument, since Stiles v. Lydia was a truly terrifying match-up, and both could make his life a living hell.

Stiles had won, obviously, but only because he had waited until Lydia went home and had stayed up late into the night plotting out constellations they could see from their spot on Earth. Lydia had stared up at the stars the next day and let out a heavy sigh, but hadn’t carried on the argument further.

Derek tried to, carefully, shift himself so he was sitting but Emmeline, the stubborn little girl that she was, pushed herself up further along his chest and stomach so she was dragged over him completely.

For not being their biological daughter, Emmeline was practically Stiles’ little clone.  

Many times over the course of their relationship had Stiles fallen asleep on top of Derek and then whenever Derek tried to move or get up, he would throw an arm or his whole body across Derek like a blanket in order to continue cuddling.

Every shift Derek made was met with an equal reaction shift from Emmeline.

He tried scooting her off of him and onto the mattress, just for her to scoot herself right back where she’d been before.

Finally, giving up, he sat up and lifted her with him, sitting her on his lap.

She stood on her feet, looking disturbed and extremely unhappy before she started making pitiful whimpers and tiny cries.

Derek let out a long breath as she stepped into him, wrapping her arms over his shoulders the best she could to cry into his neck. He shook his head and rubbed her back. He leaned back and lay her on top of him, giving in and letting her cry into his chest until she cried herself to sleep.

***

When he woke up in the morning, he was curled up as best he could in the crib with Emmeline curled up in the space by his head, dozing so heavily that she was actually letting out tiny baby snores. The light from the sun barely risen streamed through the window and right into the crib, although Emmeline didn’t seem to care.

It was times like this that he understood the phrase “sleep like a baby,” with Emmeline out like a light for once.

Derek stretched as best he could and a snicker came from above him. He looked up and found Stiles grinning down at them.

“When you weren’t in bed this morning, I thought maybe you’d fallen asleep in the rocking chair, but this is not what I expected.”

Derek sat up and Stiles helped him out of the crib, grinning the entire time.

“I forgot about the rocking chair, actually,” Derek admitted, looking at the antique chair that had been passed down through the Hale line until it had reached Derek and Stiles. It goes, technically, to the eldest child but Laura and Lydia didn’t actually plan on having children, what with Lydia trying to get her doctorate and every bachelor’s degree in every related topic. So it was passed to Derek and Stiles as soon as the paperwork was cleared for them to bring Emmeline home.

“You’re ridiculous,” Stiles said, but he said it with an expression that Derek couldn’t place. He looked happy, though, like he had everything that he could possibly want. “Come on, I think we have a few hours before munchkin wakes up for real. We could get in some quality Netflix and chill time.”

Derek rolled his eyes, because Stiles was always trying to be sneaky about sex, even though they’d been married for _three years_. He followed his husband back to their room and flopped on the bed gratefully. Stiles turned on the television and selected the Netflix app.

“What do you want to watch?”

“I get to pick?” Derek asked, raising his head from the pillow cloud it had fallen into.

“Yeah, I figure that anyone who sleeps in a crib to get their baby to sleep gets to choose whatever they want.”

Derek decided on Criminal Minds, as they’d both seen most of it before, and he figured they wouldn’t be paying much attention to the TV anyway. Stiles curled up with Derek, giving him that look again, a dreamy, unbelievably happy look, before settling in.

To Derek’s surprise, Stiles didn’t try and make any moves. Instead, they simply cuddled up together in the center of the bed with Criminal Minds playing as Derek drifted back to sleep in his husband’s arms, and slept like a baby.

**Author's Note:**

> This is based entirely on [this video](http://www.gem106.co.uk/dad-to-the-rescue/) I saw on facebook, and you can thank [Meredith](poppunktrashdotorg.tumblr.com) for being the one who's like "I need a fic" and then, I wrote a fic because she's been stressed. This marshmallow fluff fic is for you. You are my only real bae. :*


End file.
